Tuesday, April 16, 2013

WORKING ON MY GUEST ROOM QUILT...AND MORE...

Since J moved out of the house back in January, Dear Hubby and I have been playing musical bedrooms...fixing up J's room as my "Expansion Sewing Room" and slowly moving hubby's "house" office out of the fourth bedroom, which will become our new guest room.  Since we have moved J's old queen sized bed into the guest room, we will need bedding to match the room.  Luckily I found a set of new blue sheets in the linen closet, but the only blankets/quilts available to put on the bed are J's old black vellux blanket and his dorm room denim quilt.  Not very pretty for our new room!  Serviceable and warm, yes, but pretty?  No.  So I have begun work on a quilt for the bed.


After paying to have J's old room repainted, hubby and I certainly can't afford to change the decor of the guest room too.  Being "stuck" with the yellow (not my favorite color...the room was originally J's gender neutral nursery updated years ago with a border and curtains to make a grown up bedroom)


I picked out Sweet Shoppe Calico Candies material by Benartex as it contained all of the colors of the bedroom and retained that "cottage-y" feel (which I DO love, by the way!  It's so ME!).


I then picked out a pattern that felt "scrappy" to me (my first love in quilts) and mimicked the lattice frame on the wall.   However, since I am using 5" charms to construct this quilt, with each of my blocks finishing at 4.5", it is going to require tons and TONS of blocks and hours and Hours and HOURS of work!  Good thing I am in no rush to have the room finished (especially when I only average 12 to 18 blocks per week!), lol.  I am not even sure I have enough charm squares to finish a queen sized top.  Lol.  I tend to "wing it" when designing quilts and adapt as I go along.  While I do have quite a few similar patterned/colored fat quarters that I could cut into charms allowing me to keep it completely a 4.5" block quilt, I may consider some type of sashing to break up the pattern and speed the quilt to completion.  I'm not sure yet and will play it by ear as I move along.  


I am using Bella Solid white charms in the construction of the block.  



Each charm is cut into 2.5" squares, which are used to form the pattern of my quilt blocks.  


White squares are positioned in opposing corners and pinned in place. 


Then, using my all-time favorite quilting gadget (Quilter's Magic Wand), I draw my stitching lines. 


By moving the wand to the right of the stitching line I am able to draw another stitching line 0.5" away.  


Two stitching lines done.  


Flip the block around and do the same on the other 2.5" white square. 


Move to the machine and sew on all four stitching lines.  





Snip all threads and prepare to kill two birds with one stone!  


Cut down the middle of your two sewn lines.  


This will give you your primary block AND two teeny tiny half square triangles for a future project!


I wasn't kidding when I said "teeny, tiny"!  Those small HST's will finish at just 1" square!  Teeny, tiny and Oh. So. Cute!  I am thinking they would look just darling as the border on a throw pillow!  As tiny as they are, though, I know better than to try to work with them unless I am having a really good tremor day, lol.  


So, after working on my quilt for just 30 minutes my tremors decided to make their presence known and forced me on to bigger, more tremor friendly things (crochet).   


My stack of completed blocks to date.  A mere thirty one blocks out of, oh I don't know, maybe a gazillion?  This quilt is going to take a long, LONG time, lol.  I think my mom was right when she said I needed to live to be at least 125 to finish all of the projects in my head, but maybe I need that many years just to complete THIS one!


Off to work on crocheting the last dish cloth so I can list them in my shop.  Oh, and speaking of crochet...


On Sunday the landscaper came out and weeded, edged and mulched my flower beds.  Over the years all of my beautiful daffodils have died...with the exception of the muted, slightly peach colored flowers you see above.  They looked so pretty set against the new dark black mulch.  So I took my scissors out and cut a few fresh flowers to enjoy in my sewing room.  After pulling out my small vase I decided that a thin, top heavy water filled vase was NOT an ideal candidate for a tremor ridden admirer.  I could just PICTURE the vase and water splattered all over!  A quick search through my glass jar collection located this short, squat jelly jar.  While I like the pattern in the glass, it was still BORING.  So I crocheted a white bobble edging to put around the rim.  Okay, better...but still kinda BORING.  I crocheted a few pink flowers and green leaves to add to the edging.  I pinned them onto the edging in an effort to "live with the look" before I attach them permanently.  Cute, but.....I don't know.  



I like the light pink because it clearly picks up the pink flowers on my tea pot, but I feel like something is just not "right".  Maybe two flowers are too much?  Any suggestions are welcomed!!!! 
 

6 comments:

  1. This is going to be a beautiful quilt and I actually like a yellow bedroom. The colors will be perfect! Thanks for sharing.
    Freemotion by the River Linky Party Tuesday

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Connie. I actually do love the cottage-y feel of the room and I adore the border. I think I am just sick of the color after all of these years. We painted the room and set it up as a nursery back in 1990 when we moved in. Our DS was almost 2 and in his "big boy" room already. We had intended to have another child right away. Unfortunately that wasn't in God's plan and in 2000 we finally converted the never used nursery into a real bedroom, but since the room had never been used we kept the yellow paint to save money. It was an informal, rarely used, guest room until 2008 when Dear Hubby moved his desk in there...meaning it was still basically unused, lol. Two years ago we finished the basement and Hubby is moving his office down there and it will be a full fledged formal guest room once more!

      Delete
  2. I love the crochet edged vase ! Especially with the yellow daffs, the scale of the daffs to the crochet flowers is lovely. Cut flowers are so pretty but so expensive why not crochet yourself a pretty "bouquet" to match the buttery yellow room ?

    SO glad you are able to enjoy yourself doing "homey things " Remember when you were working so hard and could only dream of having the time to do that ; )

    Rinty

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good thought, Rinty! Lucy at Attic24 has some beautiful flowers, including daffs! I will make a bouquet!

    Over the past several years of not being able to do any gardening personally, all of my daffodils and roses have died. I used to LOVE cutting a few Princess Diana roses (my favorite) and putting them in a small pitcher in the center of my kitchen table. In spring it was daffs, in summer roses. I miss that, but you are right, now I have the time to make them!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have 3 charm packs of that same fabric. I am hoarding it until I know exactly what i want to make with them. =) Your quilt will be lovely.

    Thnaks for the tip on the gadget. I love gadgets!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. You're welcome! It is one of my favorites, especially when doing HSTs!

    ReplyDelete